DNR schedules hearing on Valley plant permit

From a blog post by Tom Content on JSonline:

An air emissions permit to operate the Valley power plant in Milwaukee should be renewed, the state Department of Natural Resources has concluded.

That finding, concerning an air emissions permit first issued in 1998, will be the subject of a DNR public hearing Thursday in Milwaukee.

Environmental groups sued the DNR this summer in Dane County Circuit Court because it had not issued an updated permit for the project.

That suit is now on hold while DNR proceeds with work on the air permit.

The Sierra Club and Clean Wisconsin, joined by several other groups, are seeking that DNR become more aggressive in requiring less pollution to be emitted by the We Energies plant, located in the Menomonee River Valley.

The Journal Sentinel reported this summer that the plant is allowed to operate under more lenient standards in part because of its age and in part because it wasn’t required to install modern pollution controls at a time when We Energies was moving forward to install those controls at other, larger power plants.

Posted in: Clean air,Coal